You will forget everything… especially what you didn’t really learn
 |
| Image: All Rights Reserved |
| New York : Farrar Straus Giroux |
| 2007 |
It was noisy and crowded in the cabin, in other words not a great place to talk about serious things, but Dad persisted. “How’s James?” Dad asked.
Truthfully, I hadn’t thought of James at all. I hadn’t had time—not with Dad’s wedding and Will’s sickness and Will and my photography and tennis and yearbook.
It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn’t live without him.
Apparently, I could.
That I could forget him so easily, more than the loss of James himself, made me melancholy, I guess. I wondered if my Mom had felt that way about Dad when she met Nigel again. I wondered if my biological mother had felt that way about my biological father, and even about me when she’d had to give me up.
“I don’t see him much,” I said to Dad finally.
“It happens, baby.” Dad nodded and patted me on the hand, and then he read my mind. “You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned—…
You especially forget everything you didn’t really learn, but just memorized the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you’ll forget those, you forget the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations—even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties. Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They’re the last to go. And then once you’ve forgotten enough, you love someone else.”
Extract from the book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
By Gabrielle Zevin
All Rights Reserved
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, c2007.
Call Number: Y English ZEN
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Can you really forget the things that matter to you?
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October 7th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Which book do i borrow if i want to borrow Singapore Ghost stories?
November 15th, 2010 at 11:39 am
uh…yeah…especially if you’re old, or got dementia or something…:P
November 15th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I feel that things that really matter to us arent easily forgotten
though there are instances where people forget such important things.Especially those suffering from dementia
November 15th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
It depends on what is that thing that really matters. If it has a negative effect, such as an accident, most likely it will be forgotten.
November 15th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
you may forget it. but your subconsciousness will stick to it and symbolizes it to you by verging them with dreams.
March 29th, 2011 at 8:44 am
I’m so going to borrow this awesome book!
March 29th, 2011 at 8:44 am
this is very appealing
August 17th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
There’s a room inside my heart with rows upon rows of drawers on every walls to keep all my precious memories. Each drawer has a lock and each one needs a different key to unlocked it. The key itself could be in any forms, it could be a picture we took a long time ago; it could be a particular smell, like the smell from my mum’s cooking; it could even be a song on the radio. We can never really forget the things that matter to us, but life must go on and we shouldn’t live in the past, just like we shouldn’t live in a drawer, no matter how big it is. Only the person with the will-power to open and close the Drawers of Memories can truly appreciate what’s important in life and move on.
May you never lost your ‘Keys’…
February 21st, 2012 at 8:15 pm
I think if every person were to look deep into themselves, into where the truth of their souls actually lies, they’d have to say that they never really forgot. Perhaps they could have forgotten what was said or done to them, but people never really forget how something, or someone, made them feel. Perhaps what people are really doing is to avoid. They run away. Maybe those things that matter can’t belong to them anymore, or have to leave their lives, and they just find it painful to keep those memories. In order to escape from the hurt, they manipulate themselves into believing that it never happened and to just move on.
People forget, but they never really do.
March 5th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
According to this guy’s father, you forget everything. However, I think that unless you can live a thousand years, you will never forget, in your lifetime, important things that happened to you. Unless you’re an amnesiac, that is. Memories play a huge part in our life. I wonder how an amnesiac would be different from other people or from when he/she still remembered everthing. Would they be less of a person they were and more of another they are now? A normal person would act and think according to previous experiences. But would an amnesiac be the same? Would he perhaps retain memories in the subconscious and be influenced by them or not be influenced by them at all? Anyhow, memories are precious. I would not want to be an amnesiac.
March 5th, 2013 at 11:54 pm
I remember seeing this in the library, this rocks! man. meaningful article